Make Me Feel Alive Again
by DBSMari001
Summary: Emma isn't really sure what being alive feels like anymore, she just knows how to survive. That is, until she meets him. Takes place in between season 3 and 4. Rated T and contains swearing. Enjoy.


I kick another stone along the gravel as we continue on. Day 51 after I lost my team in the epidemic. I've been keeping a count in small black ink on my arm. I used to hate writing on my hand. I used to say it caused ink poisoning. I don't do that anymore. It's been 3 days since we've seen a large group of those things. I look over at the little girl trailing slightly behind me. We've only seen 4 of them in the last few days, luckily for her. It makes me worry slightly, that we might run into a big group any day now, but at least she's safe for the moment. She's barely even 5 years old. Must've been tiny when this whole thing started, learning to walk and talk probably in this whole thing. It's kinda nice to thing that simple things like that still have to happen even when the world goes to shit. I was still young when this thing started. Barely 12 years old. I cared about my hair and my phone and things back then. Not anymore. Now I'm not sure how old I am. We've seen 3 summers I think. So I must be 15, or maybe 16. I guess it doesn't matter. I glance over at the girl carrying a big pink backpack on her tiny shoulders. I don't know her name, she wouldn't tell me it. 3 days after I found her I told her mine but at the time I didn't really care to know hers. She used to pick daisy's at the side of the road back then, and so I called her Daisy. It fits, and she likes it, so it stays, although she doesn't pick daisy's anymore. I see one of them by the side of the road. Eating off of a dead body lying next to a black rucksack. Poor bugger. I tell Daisy to stay where she is, and she doesn't object, just pulls her small knife out of it's sheath at her waist and stands still waiting for me. I drop my rucksack on the ground, pull out my machete from the belt at my leg and move towards it. As I get closer it looks up and growls at me. Dried blood runs down from it's nose and eyes. Disgusting fucker this one. I put my blade straight through the top of it's head and it's body falls over the dead man. I move the thing's body and put my blade through the body of the man and pick up the black rucksack. I check the area around me. Clear. I wave to Daisy and she moves towards me carrying my rucksack. It's too heavy for her and so she struggles to walk towards me. I laugh at the sight and move towards her to help. Once I sort through the dead mans rucksack I put what I found in my red one. 2 cans of food, a torch, some batteries and rope and one or two blankets. Plus a little piece of him and his story; a photograph of him and a gorgeous woman with blonde hair, like mine used to be before the mud got to it. I hoist my red rucksack back onto my shoulders and me and my little girl move on. We've done this for weeks. Kill walkers, collect memories and move on till we meet the next one. I doubt it will ever really be different. I don't like big groups, never have. What happened 51 days ago just confirmed the reasons why I don't like them. I look over to the little brunette next to me, she's the only group I'm going to need. She's the only group I need to keep safe at the expense of my own safety. She turns her blue eyes towards me and I smile, we are together through all this and I hope it will stay that way. ****** When the sun begins to drop we look for strong trees, we finally manage to find one, an old pine. For the first time in a few days we saw a big group of the things wandering around. Daisy and I climbed the tree so fast it surprised even me, although we've been doing that for weeks. We can't start a fire now, don't know if it will attract the things or anything else. So we sit at one of the top branches and watch the sun going down through the leaves. I hold a can of some kind of meat in my hands and we both pick at it with bent forks in silence. It doesn't taste that good cold, but we've learned not to be picky when we're so lucky to be alive. We don't talk the whole time, I like silence and sometimes she just decides not to break it for my sake. After a little while, once the sun has gone down, the can is finished and we get out our one sleeping bag and tie ourselves in. We're high enough so that the things can't grab at us but also so that if we fall off in our sleep, we probably wouldn't survive the fall. It's uncomfortable to tie the rope around us, but we manage as always. She drifts off before me and I simply sit and watch her for a little while. She's pretty, beneath all that mud, she's so small and tiny it surprises me that she's survived. I drift of eventually but I don't dream. Not anymore. ***** I wake up early, the sun is just rising. Daisy is still asleep next to me and so I just look out through the leaves as I mark another day on my arm in pen. I'll need to wash soon, I think, but the smell helps hide you from the things a bit more. I spot the building from the night before through the trees. We couldn't really see what it was before, but now I can look at it properly. I take the old pair of binoculars out of my bag, moving slowly so as not to wake my little girl and then look over at that building. The building is all concrete. There are tall fences all around the outside. A prison. I look inside the fences, but there are the things wandering about inside. Shame. If only it didn't have them in there, it would be perfect. But then I see something strange. The thing standing in the middle of the yard hugs a smaller one. That can't be right. I watch them for a bit longer, but they aren't acting like those dead things. They are acting like they are alive. I wake Daisy quickly then, I need to go take a look. She stares at me as I climb down the tree. She'll pack our stuff, wait for a day or so and if I'm still not back she'll move on, like we practiced. I walk closer to the area where the prison is supposed to be and I see it soon, a dark cement mass in the distance. There are hundreds of those things surrounding those fences, all trying to get in. I crouch low and hide in the long grass and pick a spot where there aren't too many things and move closer. There are dozens of people now, close to the walls, all sitting and eating food. The two people I saw earlier are still in the field, checking plants that they must be growing. There are children in there, people watching the walls, guns to keep them safe, this place is a paradise. And maybe they are taking people in. I quickly talk myself out of that idea. Often these camps don't take any people in, they want to protect their own numbers and I understand that. I begin to move off. With those people watching the walls and the number of things, it's a good idea to avoid this place altogether. But as I walk away I see two people standing trying to fix a pipe. One is a middle aged woman, with a kind face scrunched up in frustration as she tries to clean the pipe of mud. She's a mother. I can tell, I've seen so many I can see it in their face. What I can see in them I'm not sure but there's definitely something in them. The other, is a man, he's young and he holds a gun. When he turns around I see that he must be Korean or Japanese or something, but he has watchful eyes and is aware of everything going on around him. But not me. Thankfully neither of them have seen me yet. I intend to stay and wait for them to leave, but then one of the things notices them and is heading straight for them, until he trips over me. He grabs for me but I try my hardest not to scream by biting my lip. He shoves me over onto the ground and my left arm falls on something sharp and I feel the blood running quickly down my arm. I quickly grab my machete with my other arm and end him, but the two people have already seen what is going on, and so have more of those things. Three of them head towards us and I thank God that I'm small as I run circles around them and take them down one by one before they even know what hit them. The two people from the prison quickly stand and walk up to me. I point my machete at them and they back off slightly with their hands in the air. 'I don't want to hurt you,' I say, 'but please back off.' I'm panting and my arm is hurting like hell. The woman starts talking to me then, 'Please hunnie we don't want to hurt you either, let us help you with that arm.' I didn't want them to help, but I don't have the supplies to patch this up myself and so I just have to hope that they won't find a reason to kill me. 'I ain't your hunnie,' I say sharply, 'but thank you,' and I drop my machete to my side. The man stretches his hand out and I hand it over to him. The woman quickly moves back to the entrance of the prison and I follow with the man behind me. The gate on the outside opens up and we quickly slip inside. A boy of about 14 with dark hair and blue eyes stands there, releasing a rope that closes the fence behind us. 'Put your weapons on the ground,' and I do as I'm told. Normally I would resist, but my arm hurts like hell. I throw my other knife onto the ground and raise my arms into the air. 'No guns?' The kid asks and I shake my head, I hate guns, they are noisy and hard to use. By that point I've lost a lot of blood, I can feel it and the pain is killing me. The woman practically has to carry me through the prison yard and into the building. They lock me up in a cell block before I can protest. 'Don't worry, you won't have to wait long.' And I'm about to say, 'I might not last that long,' but I'm too weak at that point to say it. The blood is all over my clothes now and when I lie down on the bed I simply pass out I am that weak. 


End file.
